Horton Plains National Park is located an hour away from Nuwara Eliya.
These plains, formed by millions of years of erosion, lie right on top of Sri
Lanka’s mountains. This is an must visit place if you are in your Sri LankaHolidays. Here large herds of elk, silhouetted against clouds of the lowlands,
move among scarlet rhododendrons. World’s End gives you unparalleled views of the flatland to the south, as you teeter on the edge of an 800-metre high
precipice.
Buffeted by the wind, the
highlands of the Horton Plains NP include some of the island’s most spectacular
landscapes, with stretches of grassland and forest, giant ferns, trees clawing
the clouds, and peat-rimmed lakes. This strange, wild, almost melancholy
landscape was discovered by the tea planter Thomas Farr, who named it after SirRobert Wilmot Horton, governor of the island from 1831 to 1837.
Overlooked by the Kirigalpota Mountains, the second highest range on
the island (2395 m), Horton Plains NP forms the western edge of the Haputale
range, poised high above the Ruhunu lowlands. Buffeted by the wind and too high
(1800-2 160 m) for farming, these vast highland prairies (patna) do not permit
any kind of serious crop cultivation and have escaped the intensive
exploitation of the center of the island.
This is also one of the top destinations for bird lovers who visit the
area to look for several of Sri Lanka’s endemics; these include the Yellow
Eared Bulbul, the Ceylon Hill White Eye, Ceylon Whistling Thrush and the Ceylon
Blue Magpie. The diversity of vegetation is also impressive from grasses to
ferns, shrubs and large flowering trees. The montage forest is very distinctive
with all the trees reaching a similar height to protect them against excessive precipitation,
the western slopes support the most extensive area of cloud forest in the
country. Sri Lanka tours can be organized to travel to Horton Plains.
Annual rainfall is high with the area being affected by both monsoons
as well as the inter-monsoonal periods; it is driest between January and March.
The temperatures are considered ably cooler than low lying areas. The tea
growing area of Nuwara Eliya is a convenient base for visiting the park and
Kandy or Yala can be reached within a half day’s scenic drive from here.
